The Blacklist earned its reputation as one of TV’s most addictive crime thrillers, powered by James Spader’s magnetic turn as criminal mastermind Raymond “Red” Reddington. But a thorough rewatch spotlights some hard truths beneath the show’s sleek veneer—narrative detours, inconsistent character arcs, and a central mystery that ultimately refuses to come into focus.
When The Blacklist Fires on All Cylinders
At its peak, The Blacklist sits comfortably alongside modern greats like Better Call Saul and Peaky Blinders. The early seasons deliver tightly wound suspense, twisty casework, and a propulsive cat-and-mouse rhythm that keeps every scene humming. The show’s best episodes are masterclasses in tension: the plot coils tighter, stakes escalate cleanly, and the payoff feels earned.
Spader is the series’ gravitational force. Red’s aphoristic one-liners read like darkly witty epigrams—ice-cold observations on life and death that sharpen his enigmatic aura. Those philosophical quips are especially striking next to his matter-of-fact approach to violence, underscoring a character who is both chillingly practical and oddly principled.
Yet even in standout stretches, there’s an occasional sense that the series doesn’t fully command its own mythology. Characters sometimes behave as if bent to the needs of mystery rather than motivated by consistent history, a tension that grows more pronounced over time.
After Season 6, the Series Drifts From Its Core Mission
Rewatching in full makes one trend impossible to miss: the show loses momentum after season 6. The final four seasons are weighed down by increasingly baroque exposition about Red’s past and the legacy of Katarina Rostova. Those disclosures don’t just complicate the lore; they crowd out the original conceit of Red using his blacklist to help the FBI hunt dangerous fugitives.
Meanwhile, FBI profiler Liz Keen takes a turn that alienates much of the audience. As her arc lurches into darker, more abrasive territory, a once-essential lead becomes difficult to root for. She’s not alone—other sympathetic figures morph in ways that seem engineered for shock rather than growth.
By the end, the show’s mystery-box obsession pushes the procedural premise into the background. Many fans who loved the earlier balance of case-of-the-week thrills and serialized intrigue may barely recognize the series by its finale—especially on rewatch, when the shift reads as even starker.
Tatiana Petrova Babysitting Agnes Should Never Have Happened
Among the show’s most effective antagonists, Tatiana Petrova excels at deception—first as the disarming neighbor “Madeline Tolliver,” then while impersonating Katarina Rostova. Those sequences hit differently once you know who she really is. Her stint as an Agnes babysitter becomes gut-churning foreshadowing rather than neighborly sweetness.
In season 7’s third episode, Tatiana’s initial coffee visit already feels off in hindsight; by episode seven, she kills an armed agent while looking after Agnes. Liz, convinced Tatiana is her mother, later stops trusting her with Agnes’s safety—but the damage is done. Agnes even sketches the man she saw bleeding on the floor, a macabre memento of a trauma that never should have been possible under Liz’s roof.
Too Much Filler for a High-Stakes Thriller
Spanning 218 episodes across 10 seasons, The Blacklist was always destined to have filler. Even so, the number of installments you can skip without losing crucial plot beats is unusually high for a series built on suspense.
Some episodes, like season 5’s “Lawrence Dane Devlin” and season 9’s “The Bear Mask,” feel like self-contained detours that add little to the larger arc. On the other end of the spectrum, “Misère,” “Between Sleep and Awake,” and season 2’s “The Major” function largely as clip-show hybrids—useful for catching up, but dramatically inert on rewatch.
When a thriller’s momentum is its engine, too many wheel-spinning hours sap urgency. The uneven pacing becomes more glaring when you binge the series or revisit it end-to-end.
Liz Keen’s Death Exposes a Deeper Narrative Issue
Few Blacklist moments are as divisive as Liz’s death at the end of season 8. Some argue it broke the series; others welcomed the departure of a character who had become polarizing. Both reactions are understandable—but they miss the deeper point.
Liz was a crucial part of why the early seasons worked: her uneasy reliance on Red, her moral dilemmas, and the tension around her past gave the show heart. Over time, however, repetitive rescue plots and her escalating hostility toward Red strained patience. Most of all, her single-minded quest to uncover Red’s true identity grew so dominant that it began to displace the crime thriller the show started as.
Her death didn’t cause that drift, and it didn’t fix it either. It simply marked the culmination of an arc that had been trending in the wrong direction.
Dembe’s Reinvention Undercuts Years of Character Work
Dembe Zuma begins as Red’s steadfast right hand—loyal, measured, and unwaveringly aligned with Reddington above any institution. That’s why his surprise recruitment by the FBI at the start of season 9 feels so out of character. It isn’t evolution; it reads like a reversal.
Compounding the issue, the late-series friction between Red and Dembe undermines one of the show’s most quietly compelling bonds. The loyalty that defined their dynamic for years dissolves into suspicion and estrangement, leaving a character who once anchored the series feeling unmoored.
Not Every Name on Reddington’s Blacklist Gets Revealed
One of The Blacklist’s smartest early moves is structuring episodes around numbered targets from Red’s infamous list—a clever twist on case-of-the-week storytelling that still serves the overarching plot. Over time, however, the show abandons that rhythm to chase the mysteries surrounding Red.
The result: the list itself becomes an afterthought. Despite 200 slots to fill, only 176 are identified in any form during the series, and some of the most intriguing numbers—including Number 2—remain unknown. For a show named after a list, those blanks stand out.
Red Reddington’s Identity Remains Deliberately Unclear
The show’s most debated question—who Raymond Reddington truly is—never receives an explicit on-screen answer. The prevailing fan theory suggests that Red was once Katarina Rostova and later transitioned, an interpretation subtly reinforced at key points in season 8.
Yet, when Red dies, he takes the truth with him. Only Liz appears to grasp his identity in her final moments, and she, too, dies without speaking it aloud. That choice leaves a five-season thread unresolved, an open-endedness that many will find intriguing, and others, deeply unsatisfying.
Why This Matters for Longtime Fans and New Viewers
Rewatching The Blacklist sharpens the contrast between its extraordinary highs and avoidable stumbles. The series begins as a stylish, character-rich thriller with a novel format and a towering lead performance. As it progresses, mythology overtakes momentum; filler slows the chase; key characters bend to fit the puzzle; and the central mystery declines to resolve.
For newcomers, the early seasons remain essential viewing—sleek, suspenseful, and superbly acted. For devoted fans, the later seasons offer tantalizing lore, but at the cost of focus and cohesion. In the end, The Blacklist is a lesson for future crime dramas: protect the engine that makes the show sing, and don’t let an unanswered riddle swallow the story around it.